Nortia is the Etruscan Goddess of Fate, predecessor to the Roman Goddess Fortuna (luck in English).
Nortia had a great temple in Velsna, where it was a tradition to drive a nail into the wall at the new year to mark the ending or fixing of the old year.
Fixing data in one place for common use. This is what Nortia is mainly about. You may use this blog in connection with our site, Nortia Research. ---> Nortia

Saturday, August 9, 2008

The treatment, called CyberKnife, involves a high dose of radiotherapy applied to a small area and it has a very high success rate but costs up to £30,000.

There are currently 35 CyberKnife treatment areas in the United States and 26 internationally and discussions are now underway as to whether it should be bought to the UK.

Liam Hyland of Penkhull near Stoke on Trent had two intensive CyberKnife sessions in Turkey last month. The 63 year old was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in July last year but the NHS could not offer him anything so he paid for the treatment himself.

There are more than 50 video delivery networks now in the industry (see www.cdnlist.com), including those that are P2P-based, and the vast majority of them are competing for the same business in a market that is still small in the U.S.

Based on my calculations of vendors’ revenue, the market size for outsourced video delivery services in the U.S. was $450 million to $500 million last year and has the potential to grow to about $800 million this year (see www.cdnmarket.com)

At the same time, in the past 18 months, more than 15 video delivery vendors, including P2P-based providers, have raised almost $300 million in capital. CDNetworks, EdgeCast Networks, Panther Express, GridNetworks, Highwinds Network Group, Velocix, ITIVA, Move Networks, Pando Networks, Conviva (formerly Rinera), BitTorrent, ChinaCache, RawFlow, and Oversi Networks combined raised $282.85 million in 2007 and 2008, and that number does not take into account other CDNs that have already raised money but have not yet made it public or those that are out in the market raising another round. When all is said and done, I expect close to another $100 million will be raised in the next 12 months. Combine this much money being raised with a market that’s not as big as some think and one has to worry that, in the next 18 months, the number of video delivery networks in the industry will fall considerably. The market can’t support 50 providers, and not every company will be acquired and make back their investors’ money.

History has a way of repeating itself, and we have gone through this before. In 2000, before the bubble burst, we had nearly 50 CDN providers in the market. Two years later, we had less than 10. Five years later, we’re back to 50, but for how long? At some point, investors are going to want to see some return on their money, and with fewer video delivery networks focusing on doing more than just delivering bits, it’s going to be hard to get acquired unless they can show a lot of revenue, which most don’t have.

Back in December, AT&T announced that it would spend $70 million to $80 million this year to build out its CDN offering and focus on the video delivery business. But while financial analysts have been quick to downgrade Akamai every time a telco says it is going to enter the CDN market, even AT&T won’t make a big dent any time soon. You can’t build a CDN overnight, even if you are a telco and own the pipes, and while placing servers and turning up capacity is not hard, it’s all the other pieces around the CDN offering you need to have in place that make it difficult. Without reporting, content management, transcoding, etc., no CDN offering can get very big, and AT&T is aiming to have only 400Gbps of capacity for all of its CDN services by year’s end, which is only 20% or less of the capacity that some larger players have in the market.

While many don’t give telcos a shot at being real competitors in the CDN market, most are underestimating Level 3. I expect that by the end of this year, the company will be the No. 3 provider in the U.S., based on CDN revenue, and it will quickly become the No. 2 provider behind Akamai next year.

While AT&T and Level 3 are the only telcos in the market today, additional telcos have confirmed that they will be entering the market shortly. The real question is whether they will have the mentality of wanting to build everything themselves, like most telcos do, or of acquiring smaller players in the industry to get to market faster. Either way, one thing is for sure: The CDN market has yet to peak, and new providers will continue to enter the market in the second half of this year.

Some say HD is going to be the biggest factor for CDN growth, but HD viewing adoption in large numbers is years off. HD will have some impact this year, but most content owners are not encoding content in this format and are focusing on a bitrate around 700Kbps. But even with HD having a small impact this year, it still adds to the growth that CDNs are going to see in the next few quarters. Content owners are putting up more content in more platforms and at higher bitrates, and much of that content is longer in length. This all amounts to a huge increase in the number of bits being delivered via the CDNs.

In the next 12 months, we should see a clear indication of who the top five or six providers are going to be based on revenue. The market for CDN services shows no signs of slowing down, and the demand for video delivery services will only continue to grow as longer form, higher quality content is played back more often and on more devices. Once online video advertising gets its act together and content owners truly are able to make money from their content, more content will be produced for the web and will be delivered by the CDNs.

While I expect the number of CDN providers to drop dramatically in the next 18 months, that’s not a sign of a downturn. The reality is that there are more providers today than the market can bear, and the market will not grow fast enough in the next 18 months to support them all. When this happens, some will try to take it as a sign that the CDN market is slowing down, that customers are going to build out CDNs themselves, or that it’s too hard for the CDNs to operate profitability. This is not the case.

Rob Powell, at Telecom rumblings, is underlining that Level 3 will be expanding its CDN reach in Asia with 3 additional nodes in China, a very interesting selling tool for multinational customers, IMHO.

In Asia alone, Level 3 plans to expand its caching capacity tenfold. In Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong, capacity will be increased exponentially. In Mainland China, Level 3 will add three locations in order to serve the most populous areas and optimize content delivery within China.

Good morning. Hey Hossein, I just had a quick question, as you look at the demand outlook for there for data center space. Could you just give us like some sense today, if you look at your sales pipeline what percentage of that pipeline comprises about and comprises as suppose to internet-centric businesses? And also if you could just give us a little bit of color on how your customer mix has evolved over the years, I know the initial demand for data center space was driven by the internet-centric businesses, but I would imagine that your customer mix is lot more diversified today then it what it was like three or four years ago?

Hossein Fateh

I think you are absolutely right on that, but however, it is more market centric and each market is different. Virginia is a round number its perhaps 60% to 80% internet based. Santa Clara, I would put at the same percentages perhaps even higher. Chicago is lower because Chicago being in the middle of country that’s tenants required data centric space and they want one data center. Chicago is the perfect location for that, and they want it in the middle of the country due to license fee issues. And it's a perfect market for that. Chicago will be non-internet based.

New York will be mostly around the banking sector and we actually feel very good about the banking outsource data center business and that perhaps a year ago or 18 months ago significant bank may not outsource data centers due to perhaps one thing to build their own data centers now many of the banks they are under stress and we feel outsourcing will be a fabulous option for them. So, we feel very good about our demand in New Jersey. I think to answer your question it depends on each market -- each market will be different.

Sri Anantha - Oppenheimer

Okay, but just if you look at your sales pipeline today where do you think the incremental demand is coming from, do you think it's still skewed towards internet businesses or it's now more a logic portion is coming from big traditional enterprise companies?

Hossein Fateh

Well I think Virginia and Santa Clara will be more skewed towards internet businesses in fact the large portion which we feel that Chicago when you look at our sales pipeline is probably 60%, 65% non-internet and 30%, 35% internet business. New Jersey will probably we guess is going to be probably in the same as Chicago 60%, 65% non-internet but we feel good about New Jersey in that many of the banks -- we want to expand there and have data center presence that’s outsourced and also the size of the tenants in New Jersey will be significantly larger than in Chicago.

Sri Anantha - Oppenheimer

Well the last question I have is, could you talk about demand from your existing customers they have existing customer base, do you think that the demand from them is still increasing at a pace --?

Hossein Fateh

In a [hysteretic] way, in a very good way we trench power loads of our tenants and we would not want to disclose them publicly but we see the loads increasing and that’s the very big way and we are tracking many of our existing customers and we believe not only they will expand in Virginia but they will expand with us in other markets.

The emergence of social network sites such as Facebook and of Internet-based "cloud computing" services from Amazon and others should help generate more revenue for companies like Equinix that sell interconnection data services, says Trip Chowdhry, an analyst for Global Equities Research.

"They need to put their data centers somewhere, so Equinix becomes a default choice," he said.

Outsourcing data center services to a company such as Equinix reduces headaches and costs, Chowdhry said.

"People don't want to be worried about hiring and firing various administrators," he said. "The costs of operating a data center is dramatically reduced if they put it in Equinix."

Upside: Network solutions providers should benefit as more companies grow to rely on the Internet.

United States of America (Press Release) August 7, 2008 -- It's a revolutionary cancer treatment and Tampa is one of about 40 places in the U.S. to have this new technology. News Channel 8's Gayle Guyardo tells you about the CyberKnife.

CyberKnife technology involves no cuts or incisions. It works by targeting tissue with multiple beams of high-energy radiation on the tumor site. It is specifically designed for treating the most complex and difficult tumors – cancers of the lung, spine, pancreas or brain.

News Channel 8's Gayle Guyardo talks to patients undergoing the treatment - they tell her it's painless. There are no incisions, no blood, no anesthesia, and most deal with now recovery time.

Tune in to News Channel 8's Morning Edition and look for Gayle Guyardo's reports on the latest technology now available in the Tampa Bay area.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

>>Doctors said a new option for treating cancer can destroy tumors without invasive surgery and many patients said recovery is immediate.Reports are that actor Patrick Swayze had it to treat his pancreatic cancer. Cher claims in published reports that her good friend Farrah Fawcett had the treatment as well.

...

NBC 10 asked Lamond if Cyberknife has helped Patrick Swayze's cancer. Lamond said he has not seen him as a patient and doesn't know about his personal case but said the Cyberknife has not had the same success with pancreatic cancer as with other cancers.But he said Cyberknife is very good at reducing the side effects of pancreatic cancer by reducing tumor size and giving patients a better quality of life.

We at Internap are very familiar with VitalStream's CDN technology and businessoffering as we are the second largest reseller of Akamai product, and Akamaioffers a strong set of complementary products in this area.

Eric Vancoff - Morgan Joseph - Analyst

Good afternoon and congratulations on both sides. A couple of quick questions. First of all, mechanics of the transaction. Are there any collars in place to sort of ensure the outcome and the value on the VitalStream side? Number two is kind of a multiple-part question in terms of -- what percentage of Internap's revenues today are generated from reselling Akamai, and how much of that can potentially be migrated over to, say, the VitalStream platform?

Jim DeBlasio - Internap - President, CEO

I will answer that second first, Eric, and then I will turn over to Jack and to Dave Buckel to respondas well to the first part about the collars and the mathematics of the deal.

But with regard to the Akamai revenue that we currently have in the Internetbusiness, it's relatively small, and less than 5% of our revenue stream. We are,in fact, the second-largest reseller of Akamai equipment and have a very goodrelationship with Akamai. We resell for them, they resell for us, and it worksvery well. And, I do believe that that relationship can, and I expect it tocontinue to work very well because of the relationship we have and what we offereach other. I also think that the VitalStream acquisition offers a set ofproducts that are complementary to the Akamai suite of products, and it doesnothing but builds out our solution that we can offer customers, and -- which isanother one of the exciting things about this acquisition and where it positionsus, Eric, in the future. Jack, I'd like to turn it over to you, if you can addsomething to that.

Jennifer Adams - Cowen & Company - Analyst

This is Jennifer Adams on behalf of Tom Watts. Congratulations on the deal. Youtouched on this earlier, Jim, but if you could give us a little bit more flavorwhat your relationship with Akamai will be like going forward. And specifically,now that you are potentially competing with them directly, do you see any threatof them withdrawing business from Internap? And if so, what kind of an impactcould that have on you in the short term?

Jim DeBlasio - Internap - President, CEO

As I mentioned before, the Akamai revenue in the Internap business model is relatively small. Aside from that, we are enjoying a very good relationship with Akamai. As I mentioned before, we resell their products, we are the second-largest reseller of their CDM products. They resell our product. They give us leads with their customers, we provide the same to that, and the relationship is working very well. And they have a very good product and a very strong product that is complementary to many of the products that we have acquired through the VitalStream acquisition.

Rod Ratliff - Stanford Group - Analyst

Okay. Jack, how big is the VitalStream physical footprint, in terms of the number of servers?

Jack Waterman - VitalStream Holdings Inc. - Chairman, CEO

We don't actually quote that number publicly. Clearly, Akamai is the largest in the world and they don't quote their number publicly.

Shapiro started buying in Q1 of 2008 and had accumulated about three million shares or so by the time I contacted them in April. My pitch to them was the same as with all the large shareholders which was to ask them to take a more active role in terms of getting some leadership out of our Board of Directors. I don’t know what sort of conversations they have been having with Accuray, but I do know they have been talking and now we know that they have more or less doubled their position.

Shapiro’s general modus operandi is that of a long-term value investor. They are probably not looking to either initiate or participate in a buy out of Accuray nor is it likely that they would mount a charge, at least not as the leader, of an activist shareholder revolt. But they do now hold a large block of shares and my take is that they are well aware of what is going on at Accuray both the good as well as the not so good.

I see their involvement as nothing but positive. It’s a good indicator that our research and analysis of this company is on track. It’s a good stabilizing force for the share price and it does tend to put the right sort of pressure on management. If we do have issues coming up for a shareholder vote, like last year’s management compensation bonanza, I see Shapiro as a natural ally of the shareholders. And if we find that we do we need to round up a majority, at least we now know where to find better than a fifth of the votes required.

As far as the specifics of what I was trying to get across back in April, most of you already know my agenda but for anyone new to the conversation, I’ll recap it for you below exactly as I communicated it to the Accuray Board of Directors and large investors:

1. Take a more aggressive and effective approach to technology explanation and differentiation.

We're in the SRS business. Most analysts still don't even know that. They think we're in the radiotherapy business. Verbal explanations are not getting it done. We need a compelling animated video now followed up with Dr. Thomson’s presence and participation at any and all credible investor conferences that will have us. Sending in the CFO without the CEO sends the wrong message. We need our best spokesperson to work this problem aggressively and persistently until the market gets the difference between CyberKnife SRS and gantry-mounted SRS pretenders. As CEO, Dr. Thomson needs to take personal responsibility to get this done now.

2. Take a more transparent approach to financial disclosures.

We need to disclose all orders and their status. We need to answer any and all questions concerning revenues, margins, orders, etc. We have nothing to hide. We gain nothing by acting like we do. Wall Street needs to know exactly what is going on with orders and backlog. Management’s antagonistic approach to working with the analyst community has not produced a positive result. We need to clear the air and get off to a fresh start. And in order to do that, we must also address the following…

3. Take a hard look at and have a come-to-Jesus talk with your CFO Robert McNamara.

He may (or may not) be the greatest boardroom CFO in history but if he can’t handle an earnings call without shuffling through his notes, sounding evasive and irresponsive and in general doing everything humanly possible to scare off every analyst in attendance, he’s not getting the job done.

Internap had a tough second quarter, which followed a tough first quarter. At the same time, it downwardly revised revenue and EBITDA guidance for the rest of the year. Internap's stock price took an unsurprising stumble, and now the top questions on T1R's lips are – is an acquisition in .....

>>The sales team currently is engaged with well over 4 million square feet of new customer prospects, representing over 420 megawatts of data center demand. We continue to see a significant lack of supply necessary to meet this demand and DLR is one of the few data center provider to actively billing speculative Turn-Key space across our major markets. The depth and experience of our technical team makes DLR a preferred infrastructure solution provider for many large corporations and system integrators.

On last quarter's call, I discussed results of a study we commissioned that focused on the current drivers demand for datacenters in the U.S., including immediate and longer term growth prospects. Consistent with these results, and despite the challenging economic environment, Fortune 1000 companies, Internet enterprises, and the system integrators continue to make significant investments in IT infrastructure. And this reflects the critical nature of these assets to today's corporations. Our teams are experiencing strong demand in the major markets in the U.S. and Europe especially for our Turn-key product.

I would now like to return to our – like to turn to our revised guidance for 2008. With better visibility towards our full year 2008 results, we are raising FFO guidance by $0.05 to a range of $2.40 to $2.50 per diluted share in unit. The new guidance reflects a shift in our leasing mix towards our Turn-Key Datacenter solution

Will Marks – JMP Securities

Great. Okay. And then, general thoughts, Will, on the rate side of things. Are rates continuing to go up for datacenter space in general and along the same lines, I've heard that in Silicon Valley there's basically – or San Francisco south, there's very little, if any, datacenter space available. Can you comment on that?

Bill Stein

Sure. We're seeing – we really sell out pricing in almost all of our markets today. It varies – our rates that we're quoting on our per square foot basis vary by quarter-by-quarter, especially for the Turn-Key because of different utilizations and the way the spaces are laid out. On a kilowatt – per kilowatt basis, rates have gone up for us over the last four quarters. On an accumulative basis, about 30%. Now we don't see that trend continuing quite that same pace, but what we're seeing good trending and pricing on a kilowatt basis, and we think we'll continue to see good returns.

On Silicon Valley, going to your question there, right now there's not much space at all available and we're actually working on a couple of buildings on our Space Park Drive site that will be coming on online here in the next nine months – six to nine months or so. – So, we're hoping to get ahead of the market there for that. There are some large projects that are on the planning side that I will be coming online second-half of '09 and 2010, but right now there's definitely a lack of supply.

Jordan Sadler – KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay. And then, could you talk about markets and where you're seeing the most significant dislocations in terms of demand outweighing supply? Just give maybe your – give it a rank currently.

Michael Foust

I mean this isn't exactly in exact rank order but we're seeing Silicon Valley and these are all kind of favorable from our perspective in terms of high demand and lack of supply right now. Chicago certainly. We're seeing it in – well, even more in Dallas now is starting to turn. But even more so, Northern Virginia, a very strong market for us. New Jersey and Northern New Jersey, and then Paris and London. So, those markets are probably the ones that have kind of the strongest supply-demand imbalance in our favor.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to assess the outcomes of patients treated with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) in patients with primary, recurrent, or metastatic lung lesions, with a focus on positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT)-based management. Patients andMethods: Fifty-one patients with primary stage I non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC; n = 26), recurrent lung cancer after definitive treatment (n = 12), or solitary lung metastases (n = 13) were treated with SBRT between 2005 and 2007. Patients were treated with the CyberKnife(R) Robotic Radiosurgery System with Synchronytrade mark respiratory tracking. A dose of 60 Gy was delivered in 3 fractions. All patients had CT or PET/CT performed at approximately 3-month intervals after treatment.

Results: The median follow-up was 12 months. Local control at median follow-up was 85% in patients with stage I NSCLC, 92% in patients with recurrent lung cancer, and 62% in the patients with solitary lung metastasis. Analysis of the 28 patients with pre- and post-treatment PET/CT scans demonstrated that those with stable disease (n = 4) had a mean standardized uptake value (SUV) decrease of 28%, partial responders (n = 11) had a decrease of 48%, and patients with a complete response (n = 11) had a decrease of 94%. Patients with progressive disease (n = 2) had an SUV decrease of only 0.4%. Only 2 patients (7%) who had reduced fluorodeoxyglucose avidity later progressed locally. No correlations were found between pretreatment SUV and tumor response, disease progression, or survival. Overall 1-year survival rates were 81%, 67%, and 85% among the patients with primary NSCLC, recurrent lung cancer, and solitary lung metastases, respectively.

>>Sean McAvan is one such person. As managing director of NaviSite Europe, he's responsible for storing data for a wide range of customers – from internet start-ups running cutting-edge web applications, to mid-size corporates backing up their data, to e-commerce sites processing thousands of our credit card transactions each day. NaviSite is just one of around 40 such companies within this one facility in the heart of London's Docklands – a building that used to house the Financial Times's printing presses – and whether you're a geek or not, it's an awesome spectacle. "If you consider the amount of electromechanical engineering in here," says McAvan, "and the number of machines, the amount of software they hold, and then extrapolate that across thousands of facilities like this one, it makes your head spin."

Lack of execution, as usual (blaming the economic climate: couldn't you see it coming?)

>>George E. Kilguss, III

The other challenge is the economy. We are seeing sales cycles elongate. We are seeing customers taking longer decision timelines to close these transactions and those are also giving us some pause in putting our forecast together. <<

One small and stupid question: why isn't colo effacted from this slow down? Do people still buy new colo space for their servers while they stop using bandwidth and CDN? Isn't leadership about recognizing where you have a better opportuny?

Lack of strategic vision. The missed completely the priorities. While other competitors were doing the right moves (SVVS, NAVI. Selling or de-enphasizing CDN. Building or adding colo).

I'll just quote a few things, for fun:

>>Thomas Watts – Cowen and Company

So the additional operating costs, pre-opening that you talked about, what are those primarily and what sort of fill do you need to offset those?

George E. Kilguss, III

As we take possession of the facility, as we’re building it out, we have to incur and record the rent costs. <<

With regard to your question on margins data center really has two components to the margin. One is the new facilities coming on line. For example Boston, our expansion in New York, those facilities while we’re building them out we’ve taken possession of those and we have to include that rental expense in our cost of goods sold line.<<

I don't believe that's true for New York, you are already in that facility, and paying the rent. I can accept Boston... that's a brand new center, although something could have been done to mitigate the effect (like paying next to nothing now and more after the opening. we're talking very long term contracts... there's room for some negotiation).

>>James P. DeBlasio

In the area of CDN it’s a much easier sale to leave the way the CDN is more discretionary and someone can have CDN service with us for several months, a month or two and then decide to leave and switch off to someone else.

Wow, what a surprise... you've decided to invest in a very sticky business... ;-)

>>James P. DeBlasio

The strength of the market in the data center business is very strong, it’s very strong, very robust. We’re seeing some real good growth, no delay in the sales cycles there. The sales are difficult sales because they’re very complex with the attach that we have for IP and CDN but nothing out of the ordinary.<<

Let me get it: the bundle is making the sale more difficult? ;-)

I will just end with a note on colo margins:

>>George E. Kilguss, III

At the present time while we’re waiting for some of those factories to come on line we have continued to expand in our partner sites. As I think you know our partner sites’ gross margin is less than our company controlled sites so as we are continuing to sell under the partner sites that also has a natural downward pressure on our gross margins.<<

Take it easy, don't rush up investing in colo... it's not about right timing...

ATLANTA -- Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP), a global provider of optimized, reliable end-to-end Internet business solutions, today announced that it has approved an investment of up to 40 million dollars to fund the expansion of its colocation facilities in several key markets. The company anticipates implementing the expansion over the next three to four calendar quarters, with any potential funding to be provided under standard commercial financing arrangements.

Six quarters later...

>>James P. DeBlasio

In Boston we’re planning on a fourth quarter 08 build and opening and in New York mid-fourth quarter 08. 8,000 square feet in New York, 15,000 square feet in Boston. As you know our plans are that as we are building out the facilities we are pre-selling into those facilities along the way and the demand has been strong, Tom. It’s too early to say at this point how much of it gets filled up and when but we’re seeing some very positive signs in our data center business driven by the market.

Even Terremark gave a number (20% filled) for their new Virginia facility...

The more Reliance waits, the cheaper a potential acquisition might be. If there's any value left, I'm just afraid to think what they can do with their strategy of opening new pnaps. Watch for Flag getting in the bandwidth mix?

>>Linkedin has expanded its relationship with Equinix, taking down an undisclosed amount of space at a Chicago-area Equinix facility. Although Linkedin was keeping a low profile on the precise location, T1R believes it to be Equinix's newer Chicago 3 (CH3) facility in Elk Grove, which is rapidly becoming a hotbed .....

“This is the first installation in the world – this is a big deal,” said Diane Heaton, medical director of Oklahoma CyberKnife Center in Tulsa. “It’s already exceeding expectations and we have calls from all over the world about it coming in.”

Mark Arnold, senior director of product marketing for Accuray, said the Tulsa center was the first site to obtain the full package of the new model.

The CyberKnife has been around five years and to date about 130 systems have been installed treating more than 40,000 patients. Other hospitals in the Tulsa area have a CyberKnife system, but Heaton said other hospitals have the older model.

Three months ago the doctors moved into their 5,000-square-foot facility and have seen about 20 patients since opening in early July.

Heaton said she hopes eventually about 30 to 40 patients will be treated each month.

“Hillcrest has put a lot of energy in this and so far the response has been excellent,” she said.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Better for typistsApple made every smart phone on the planet look like a wonky old typewriter when the iPhone transcended buttons and introduced its swanky multi-touch screen, but Blackberry is making the same leap and using an even more advanced interface. It’ll use both an on-screen QWERTY in landscape mode, as well as BlackBerry’s own SureType keyboard for text entry when held vertically, and that’s on top of its next-generation hepatic feedback, which will make each virtual key vibrate individually. It’s set to seriously improve text entry.

In 2004, Overlook became the first facility in the Northeast to offer CyberKnife treatment, a noninvasive robotic radiosurgical device that treats inoperable brain tumors. In the past four years, CyberKnife has grown by leaps and bounds to include treatments for spine, lung, liver, pancreas and prostate tumors.

a comment on GigaOM, the most interesting part is about AT&T owning the network:

>The key advantage to AT&T’s service is that it controls not just the servers and the cloud, but it also owns the network that those bits of data must traverse to get from the cloud to your computer. That’s a powerful proposition because it gives AT&T one more potential point of failure that it can guarantee and control. It also could lead the way for some interesting pricing options given that AT&T will know exactly how much it costs for each byte of storage and each compute cycle, but it also has the wholesale costs of bandwidth.

But after Alan's wife stumbled across a treatment on the internet - just a few weeks after this fateful diagnosis - he was soon in a hospital in Washington DC having Cyberknife therapy.

Dr Gregory Gagnon, of the Department of Radiation Medicine at Georgetown University Hospital, who treated Alan, says: 'This has opened up a whole new wave of cancers for treatment which were previously considered inoperable. For example, we have been collating data on treatment of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer over the past three years.

'Usually this condition has a survival rate of 30 per cent over three years. Patients who have undergone Cyberknife have a survival rate of around 90 per cent over the same period.

'We have treated spinal cancers without damaging the spinal cord and the vital nerves that surround the spine, and can even use it to treat multiple secondary tumours.'

In other aggressive cancers, such as pancreatic, Dr Gagnon claims it has a 100 per cent success rate of holding the treated tumour at the same size.

There are Cyberknife centres in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Turkey, with at least eight in the U.S. - including, incredibly, one in a pet hospital in New York. But currently none in the UK. 'Janet came across an American website run by people who had used Cyberknife while we were still waiting to see if my surgeon could remove the tumour here in the UK,' says Alan.

The NHS has so far baulked at introducing this facility, but in January 2009 the private Harley Street Clinic will open its £15 million Cyberknife centre, the first in the UK. It estimates that the cost of treatment will be upwards of £12,000, although those with private health insurance should be covered.

In July, LG revealed that it had sold 7 million touchscreen handsets. This announcement came just five quarters after LG launched its very first touchscreen mobile phone. Showing similar success, Samsung recently released the Instinct, a full touchscreen handset, through Sprint. Just one week after the launch, Sprint announced that the Instinct had already become the best selling EV-DO device in Sprint's history.

The research firm predicts that the growth will not simply driven by the smartphone segment. Rather, touchscreens will increasingly penetrate the much larger feature phone segment. In fact, Nokia just announced that its initial foray into the touchscreen market will be targeted at the "volume market" because that segment of the population is the largest consumer of mobile phones.

Ike Elliot runs a very interesting comparison among Companies in the Telecom arena as far as revenues per employee. I suggest you read the whole article on his Telecosm blog, but as a summary, the winner is:

Equinix

Employees

QuarterlyCommunications Revenue (millions)

Quarterly Revenue Per Employee

Equinix

911

$172

$188,804

Level 3

5,965

$1,072

$179,715

Global Crossing, Limited

4,936

$630

$127,634

Cogent

431

$52

$120,650

Time Warner Telecom

2,859

$318

$111,228

Paetec

3,900

$404

$103,590

Verizon

235,000

$24,124

$102,655

ATT

310,000

$30,866

$99,568

XO

4,416

$361

$81,748

Note: For companies on this list other than Level 3, AT&T, Verizon, Paetec and Equinix, revenue is from the first quarter because the companies had not yet announced actual second quarter earnings yet. I did use Paetec's estimated 2nd quarter revenue range from their announcement last week to estimate revenue per employee for Paetec.

>>AT&T Inc. is unveiling a service that provides computer networking and storage services for business customers, making the telecommunications giant the latest company to invest in what is known as "cloud computing."

One of AT&T's first customers is the U.S. Olympic Committee. The organization, which runs teamusa.org and other Olympics Web sites, knows traffic will leap this month as fans watch videos and look up event results and then drop sharply as soon as the games are over. It plans to use the AT&T service to increase its network bandwidth temporarily.

Jim Paterson, a vice president of product development at AT&T, said another type of business that could benefit from cloud computing would be an e-commerce retailer that sees a spike in activity on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Mr. Paterson said companies can cut networking and storage costs by as much as 30% with a cloud-based service.

SMK Corp showcased the "Force Feedback Panel," a touch panel that vibrates in response to a touch on the screen to give the user a sensation of clicking a button.

The panel was exhibited at AT International 2008, which took place from July 23 to 25, 2008, at Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. A number of auto makers, including Daimler AG of Germany, are considering employing this panel.

As the number of operation items is increasing, many switch functions must be mounted in a limited area on displays and touch panels. However, when operating a touch panel, drivers have to direct their eyes to the panel, because buttons can't be located by touch. Touch panels are not convenient for drivers, because they have to take their eyes off the road for operation.

The newly developed panel vibrates responding to the operation, allowing the drivers to confirm that the buttons are correctly pushed without looking at the panel. However, users still have to look at the panel to locate the buttons.

It is driven by a piezo element mounted on the back of the long side of the panel. When the switch is pushed, actually the "entire panel" vibrates. However, because the user only touches the button he/she presses, he/she thinks only the pressed button is vibrating. The vibration feeling can be selected from "trembling," "ticking," etc.

It is compatible to sizes between 2.5-15 inches. The operating load is 0.05-2N, while the driving voltage is 5V DC. The power consumption during vibration is 300mA, while that of idling is 300μA.]

Welcome to the CyberKnife® Patient Support Group forum! Please post your medical questions into the "Ask the Doctors" section to communicate with doctors whom are skilled users of CyberKnife. CPSG claims no liability for nor endorses any medical opinions or advice given by doctors on this site. Doctors participating on this board are all volunteers and are not financially compensated in any way. For more information visit About the Doctors.

Patients for the surgery lie on a table with a soft pad. Generally no sedation or anesthesia is required because the procedure is painless. Radiation sessions last from 1 to 2 hours.

If all goes well, patients undergo the treatment and can immediately resume their normal activities.

On Aug. 8, he had his first radiation surgery treatment which lasted 2½ hours. Separate treatments the next two days lasted about two hours each.

“After my last two-hour sessions, I could have gotten up off the table and driven home,” said Libersky. “It was truly that painless.”

Libersky has been back to Des Moines for check-ups several times.

“They showed me my CT scan and it shows nothing but scar tissue where the cancerous spot was,” he said. “I went back at three months, then another four months, then it will be six months, then a year,” he said.

“So far the prognosis has been excellent. The results look good and I’m feeling good and gaining weight.”

If we look at the P/R issued by Reliance, it sounds like Internap will be establishing a CDN PoP in a Reliance data center, that will be then run by Reliance - something like the professional services sold to QTS recently? Hopefully (if this is the case...) the accounting of this installation service will be considered non-recurring, to avoid a jump in CDN revenues (followed by a decline the next quarter). How will the two Companies share revenues? There are more questions than answers, as no economic term has really been disclosed.

Internap will expand into India's telecom market with CDN services through a new alliance with Reliance Communications' Reliance Telecom. Rather than implement a standard reseller partnership, Internap is going to help Reliance build and operate CDN services in selected regions in India. <<

>>I’ve been a skeptic about carriers entering the CDN market directly, but partnerships like this make a great deal of sense. Internap and Reliance Globalcom are not competitors. Reliance did buy Yipes which used to sell IP Transit, but they have since de-emphasized the product almost completely in favor of ethernet and VPLS. Internap doesn’t sell ethernet or VPLS. So if an aggressive carrier like Reliance wants to enter the CDN space but doesn’t really have the assets to do it directly, a partnership with Internap’s CDN in which India gets hooked up is a case where nobody loses and everyone stands to gain.<<

and a comment to the article:

>>By the way, the ‘partnering’ deal with Internap smells a lot more like someone is gearing up to go steady, given RG’s growth strategy and its recent history of acquisitions.

Frank A. Coluccio

A few months ago, Bit Gravity and Tata had signed a similar agreement:

Tata Communications, (NYSE: TCL) a leading provider of the new world of communications, and BitGravity, Inc., the pioneer in Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) for interactive broadcasting, announced today a strategic partnership. Tata Communications will co-brand, resell and jointly market BitGravity’s technology platform worldwide as part of a value-added services offering on top of Tata Global Network. As part of the arrangement, Tata Communications, with a global presence in more than 200 countries across 300 PoPs will provide tight integration with BitGravity’s platform and their carrier-grade infrastructure, including collocation and IP-network capacity, and local sales presence in each region for the CDN offering. BitGravity will provide technology and manage the content delivery operation. The service will be sold in Europe and Asia and branded as Tata Communications’ CDN Powered by BitGravity.

Several Reliance managers have an Internap experience in their C.V., and this might have helped finalize the deal:

John Scanlon, Chief Executive OfficerJohn Scanlon became CEO of the Company in September 2004 and is a20-year veteran of the telecommunications and data services industry. Before joining the Company he held a variety of senior positions at Internap, a network services provider of high-performance IP solutions. Most recently, he was Internap's Vice President of International and Corporate Development, but also served as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Service Planning during his five years there. Prior to Internap, Scanlon co-founded international telecommunication services provider Flat Rate Communications. He served as CEO of FlatRate from 1996 to 1998, when he sold the company to European telecom provider Viatel and became General Manager of the new Viatel subsidiary. Scanlon also spent over a decade at MCI in a variety of finance, business development and marketing roles.

Scanlon holds an M.B.A. from St. Mary's College of California and a bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Oregon State University.

Keao Caindec, Chief Marketing OfficerKeao Caindec is responsible for Reliance Globalcom's marketing strategy and operations, including product marketing and management, business development, and marketing communications and programs. Caindec is a seasoned executive with deep marketing and business development experience in data communications, network optimization and acceleration, content distribution, IP route-control, VoIP, ATM, MPLS internetworking and network security. Prior to joining the Company in 2005, Caindec was a Principal and Founder of Farallon TechnologyResources, a solutions provider for advanced network services andtechnologies. Prior, he was Executive Director of Alliance Development at Internap, a network services provider of high performance IP solutions. Caindec has also held senior management positions in marketing at CyberCash (acquired by Verisign), MCI Communications, ATMnet (acquired by Verio) and British Telecom North America (Tymnet), the early pioneer of packet-switched networking.

Caindechas a bachelor's degree in Economics with a Concentration in Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Richard Cotton, Vice President, OperationsRichard Cotton is a seasoned executive with over 20 years experience in telecommunications, technology, and law. Prior to joining the Company, Cotton was with Internap Network Services Corporation, a leading provider of managed IP services, from 1999 through 2006 holding several senior positions including Vice President of Carrier Relations, Business Operations and Data Center Services.

Prior to Internap, Cotton was with Winstar Communication as a Senior VicePresident of Operations. He began his career with Winstar in 1996 as Vice President and General Counsel for the telecommunications subsidiaries. From 1993 to 1996 Cotton was in-house counsel for MCI Telecommunications Corporation. As Director, Law and Public Policy, Cotton was Lead Counsel for MCI's National Account/Global Accountmarket segment generating revenues of approximately $2 Billion annually. Prior to MCI, Cotton was in private legal practice from 1985 through 1993 with the New York law firm of Brown, Raysman & Millstein specializing in High Technology and Telecommunications matters.

Reliance is a great partner for Internap, for their strong presence in India, but also a very interesting Company worldwide.

At first sight, they are peering at Equinix Ashburn and Singapore, where Internap has a pnap, and at 111 8th Avenue, where Internap has one of its own data centers (New York). Plus the main places where you would expect to find them.

>>Breaks last week in the Flag Telecom Europe-Asia cable, owned by India’s Reliance Communications, and on the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) cable, owned by a consortium, disrupted Internet and other communications to the Middle East and India.

Indian service providers were able to avoid a major crisis by diverting traffic from the Mediterranean routes to links in the Asia-Pacific region. Increased latency of traffic on account of the new routing however resulted in slower Internet access and poor quality of voice communications, according to the Internet Service Providers' Association of India (ISPAI).

Large Indian outsourcers, who depend on communications and the Internet for their business, said the impact on their business was marginal, as they already have enough of redundancy in their communications infrastructure. Smaller operations were however hit. Some call centers in India have privately reported frequent drops in calls from customers.<<

In spite of these comments, some Indian Companies suffered a serious problem from the outage, and Reliance might now see an added value from the implementation of Internap's IP Technology. No doubt the Internap data center business may also represent an interesting value for Reliance, too.

>>Perhaps the most noteworthy Internet outage in the first quarter of 2008 resulted fromseveral undersea cables in the Mediterranean Sea being severed. Two cables were severedin late January, and two more went out of service in early February. These cable cutssignificantly impacted Internet connectivity into and out of countries in the Middle East.The two cables account for the majority of international communications capacity betweenEurope and the Middle East, and the cuts reduced bandwidth between the region andEurope by 75%, according to TeleGeography.15According to data collected by Renesys,16 Egypt, Pakistan, Kuwait, and India had the mostnetworks impacted by the cable cut. Data posted to the Renesys blog showed that over1,000 customer networks in Egypt were impacted, with over 900 customer networks inPakistan seeing problems; nearly 500 in India and almost 300 in Kuwait.Data collected by Akamai’s measurement systems showed the impact of these cable cuts onnetwork latency in the region. A visualization available at http://www.akamai.com/mideastoutageshows the degradation in network latency between measurement points to 1.5x, 2x,and 3x or more beyond normal average latency. Data collected by in-region measurementagents showed that delivery of content for Akamai customers was not impacted by thecable cuts. Akamai’s dynamic mapping system ensured that end-user requests were routedto available edge servers, which could deliver content from cache, and Akamai’s optimizedrouting technology ensured that those Akamai servers chose the fastest, most available pathwhen it was necessary for them to retrieve content from a customer’s origin server.<<

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